Wikipedia is a ubiquitous website utilised by almost all online journalists, a service used so often it’s taken for granted.

Hyperlinks are in the same category; an obvious tool of the online journalism trade, but unequivocally essential nonetheless.

According to the online encyclopedia, the “hyperlink (or link) is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document.”

Wikipedia explains the technology was first widely used in the Gopher protocol from 1991, before it was eclipsed two years later by the Mosaic browser (which could handle Gopher links as well as HTML links).

The reason I’m talking about links is because of a story I stumbled upon on www.poynter.org during the week.

It was a telling reminder of the effectiveness of hyperlinks; in less than 100 words a ten-week summary of a major news event is comprehensively covered.